As is known, such street game--referred to here as "Bottle-caps"--employed the laying out of a playing field on a street, sidewalk or driveway of approximately some 4-6 feet square, and then propelling a bottle cap in a prescribed manner from one point on the playing field to another in predetermined sequence. A typical playing field, for example, would there utilize four corner boxes along the square configuration, two more on each side of the square between the corners, and a further box in the center of the square layout. As will be understood, the game would be played by finger actuating a bottle cap around this course, from one numbered box to another, in prescribed sequence. In the more common version of playing this type of game, the layout is usually just inscribed on the ground itself with a sharp stone--where a piece of chalk were had, on the other hand, the layout could be put down the ground in bolder, more pronounced manner.
In the most usual way of playing the game, the cap from off a soda bottle or beer bottle was employed--of the type that one would pry off the bottle with a bottle opener, to free the clinched cap secured to keep the contents fresh. To make the cap slide more evenly along the ground, the player would usually scrape the bottom surface of the cap to remove the overlying layer of paint with its advertising from the surface. In order to give the cap stability in play--and to prevent it from being knocked far astray when struck by another player's cap according to the manner of play--it was not uncommon to fill the cap with a weighted material. Oftentimes the caulk insides of the cap were first cleaned out--but whether or not that caulk was removed, the filling material took on the nature of melted wax, orange peels cut to fill the cap, or tar dug out from the heated street itself.
As will be appreciated, some of the limitations as to this were the difficulty of finding a candle to light and melt so as to obtain the dripping wax in sufficient quantity to fill the bottle cap once the wax hardened; another limitation was that the orange peel, or similar filler oftentimes came loose in play, and had a reduced weight as a support. With respect to the filling of the bottle cap with "tar", on the other hand, it was necessary to find a street made of this material, and soft enough under the summer sun to be able to be pried out and then placed into the bottle cap to fill it and weigh it down. As will be appreciated, further, on the other hand, it will be understood that these types of bottle caps which close off soda and beer bottles are no longer in vogue--as modern industrial techniques have replaced those caps with screw-caps, to be twisted on and off the bottles when opening and closing them. Thus, the availability of these caps to be filled in playing this type of street game, has been significantly reduced.